


What's Worth Having

by virgo79



Category: iZombie (TV)
Genre: Blaine Debeers has so many problems, Blood and Injury, F/M, Gun Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Liv Moore's no slouch, Peyton Charles is badass, Peyton/Blaine -friendly, Zombie Violence, but not necessarily a "they're back together" story, hey not kidding about the violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 14:47:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10993104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virgo79/pseuds/virgo79
Summary: Blaine gets a call from Peyton: “Stay where you are. Lock all the doors and stay away from the windows. Liv and I are coming to get you. We’re less than ten minutes away.”It's not close enough.Inspired by the promo photos released for episode 3.10, "Return of the Dead Guy." Spoilers up through 3.07.





	What's Worth Having

Blaine fished his buzzing phone out of his pocket at the first hum, then stared dumbly at the name and photo illuminating the screen for another two. He’d snapped it while she was contorting herself into a work of pajama-clad origami to paint her toes, a thing she was remarkably and endearingly uncoordinated at, and he’d been laughing so hard she’d clobbered him dead in the face with a couch pillow a few seconds later. Then he’d painted the toes of her other foot for her, stroking a thumb over her ankle as he worked.

He knew he failed to keep even a shred of confusion out of his voice when he answered. “Peyton?”

“Blaine, where are you?” Peyton demanded by way of response.

“I’m at the funeral home. Why--”

“Shut up and listen to me,” she cut him off, and the sharp edge of worry in her voice only deepened his confusion. “Stay where you are. Lock all the doors and stay away from the windows. Liv and I are coming to get you. We’re less than ten minutes away.”

He didn’t know what it said about him that he was moving to turn the deadbolt on the north side entrance before she even stopped talking. “Peyton, what the hell’s going on?”

“Boss is back. He’s in Seattle right now.”

It took a moment to gain the momentum it needed, and when it did, the familiar surge of honed, survival-focused terror was the third thing he felt.

The first was sick, lung-crushing fear for Peyton, who shouldn’t be driving anywhere, Liv or no Liv, if Stacey Boss was back in the city. The second was the warm, tidal tug at his insides that she was coming for him herself.

“Blaine, did you hear me?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I got it.” The front doors were already locked, but he checked each one quickly anyway. “Peyton, you shouldn’t be out there if he’s back. Go somewhere safe. Send the cops here. I’ll be fine.” Back door, then the freight door in the mortuary.

“I’ll call you when we get there,” she said, not bothering to acknowledge his suggestion. He didn’t know what it said about him that the dismissal made him want to smile more than anything else. “Don’t answer for anyone until I call you, understand? We’re almost there.”

A draft that smelled like the afternoon’s rainstorm ruffled his hair, flowing soft and cool from the mortuary stairwell, like it always did when the freight door and the landing door were open at the same time. He heard Peyton swear at someone in another vehicle, heard Liv say something in the background he couldn’t make out.

Heard the floorboards behind him creak.

He stilled, briefly, just for a heartbeat or two, before turning around. The dismay that he wouldn’t get to see her again brought a lump to his throat he could barely swallow past. He was glad he’d kept the picture of her painting her toes in mismatched pajamas on his phone, glad he’d gotten to see it light up one more time.

Stacey Boss stood in the middle of the room with a gun leveled at him and a strange, manic gleam in his eyes that Blaine didn’t remember ever seeing there before. Usually he’d always reminded Blaine of the stuffed and glass-eyed predators at natural history museums: still and dead-gazed.

“Don’t come here,” he said into the phone, never looking away from those strange eyes. “Stay away. He’s here.”

On the other end of the line, Peyton’s breath went ragged. “…Blaine?”

“Don’t come,” he repeated, and ended the call.

He clutched the silent phone, hands at his sides. There was no point in holding them up.

Boss stared at him over the gun. “Was that Ms. Charles you just hung up on?” he asked, and shook his head. “That’s impolite, Blaine. Why don’t you call her back? I’d love to say hello.”

*

Peyton stared at the CALL ENDED message on her phone until it winked out, feeling like she was being strangled.

Beside her, at the wheel, Liv was wide-eyed with apprehension. “Peyton, what is it?”

“He’s there. Boss is there.” She put her hand to her mouth, not sure if she was going to throw up, start screaming obscenities, or choke on the spreading dryness in her mouth and throat.

Liv took her eyes off the road long enough to glance at her friend. Peyton was stone-still in the passenger seat, but thrumming with something, some terrible energy that could be fury or terror or resolve.

“Pey, if he’s there--”

“Don’t. I’m going, Liv.”

“I know,” Liv replied, placatingly. “But we have to decide how we’re going to do this – fast.”

Peyton nodded. “Am I being a shitty feminist if I say I’d like our chances a lot better if we had Major or Clive with us?”

“I’ll take your betrayal of our sex to the grave.”

“We don’t have a lot of options here, Liv.” She turned and gave Liv a long, hard look. “But we do have you. You’re the only thing Boss isn’t going to be able to see coming.” She looked back out the windshield, at the darkened treelines of the residential neighborhood Shady Plots was situated in, the brighter lights of the nearest business district behind them. And then she reached over and grabbed Liv’s arm. “Pull over.”

As plans went…it sucked. It was like a third of a plan. She was profoundly disappointed in herself. But they were all they had. All Blaine had. They had to make it work.

*

There were multiple lights on inside when Peyton pulled up the drive at the funeral home, but if anyone was moving, she couldn’t see them.

Her skin felt like it was going to jump off her body the entire way to the door. Her phone was heavy in her hand when she pulled it out to dial Blaine.

_whatamidoingohgodwhatifhealreadykilledblainelivisherelivisherelivisheresomewhere_

She didn’t get the chance to dial. With a clicking of locks that sounded gunshot-loud, the door swung open. Blaine stood on the other side, looking murderous and devastated. He shook his head, barely, mouth agape. “What are you _doing_?” he demanded, each word its own plea.

He’d really expected her not to come. Idiot.

“Blaine, that’s rude,” a voice said from somewhere inside, out of sight, but near. The sound of it made Peyton dig her fingernails into her palm. “Invite the lady in.”

Blaine’s eyes, when they glanced to the side, were the frigid, frostbitten blue of a January sky. He stepped aside to let Peyton enter.

Stacey Boss stood in the parlor entryway, gun in hand. “Close it and lock it. Can’t have just anyone wandering in.” He smiled up at Peyton, and the smug, menacing expression did something strange to her. Something crept up alongside the fear, a vine claiming a place for itself and holding fast.

She hated this man. This small, twisted, soulless creature that had hurt so many people, had tried to corrupt her, had used her, kidnapped her, threatened her. _Bullied_ her.

“You came back,” she said, and was impressed with the steadiness in her own voice. “Ballsy.”

Boss gave a one-shouldered shrug. “This is my city.”

“Not so much these days. The cops are certainly going to have one hell of a homecoming ready for you, though.”

“Well,” Boss said, “things change. Evidence ends up being inadmissible…witnesses perjure themselves…assistant DA’s are compromised.” His smile grew.

_You smug, evil,_ short _son of a bitch. You’re not walking away from this._

Boss gestured with the gun. “Let’s all sit down and talk, shall we? Actually, you two sit. There, and there.” He pointed to chairs, both across from him. “I’ll stand.” And his eyes flitted back and forth between the two of them, rapidly.

He was nervous, Peyton realized. She didn’t know why, but something had him spooked.

“You know Blaine here was pretty convinced you weren’t coming,” Boss said, conversationally.

Didn’t she know it. They were going to have a conversation when this was over. “I don’t really consider it good professional practice to let my CI’s get killed without protest.”

“Fair enough. And that’s why you drove over here yourself to warn him I was around? Good professional practice? And, ahh, this?” He held up a phone – Blaine’s, she recognized – so she could see the picture on the screen.

She hadn’t used that shade of pink polish since. Even looking at the bottle made her remember his laughter, bending him over double, and his unabashed meticulousness in painting her toes. Blaine had kept the photo _. Oh, Blaine._

 “So tell me. How’s a smart, successful, class act like you get taken in by a punk like that?” Boss asked, nodding towards Blaine.

Peyton let a sour look come over her face. “What can I say? The Washington Bar Exam doesn’t test for taste in men,” she answered flatly.

That seemed to genuinely delight Boss, laughter moving every part of his body but his gun arm. Peyton deliberately ignored Blaine’s reaction to it. “Ahh, dammit, I like you. Well, I wouldn’t beat yourself up about it too much. He comes by it naturally.” Boss’s mirth shifted into a sneer as he threw a glance in Blaine’s direction. “He ever tell you what he used to sell out there before Utopium?”

Blaine’s mouth twisted, pain flashing behind his eyes before he could hide it, and Peyton went cold.

“No? Didn’t volunteer that part while you were spilling your guts, Blaine? Guess I can’t blame you. Wouldn’t make for good pillow talk, either. Well, maybe for a certain sort of person.” Boss turned back to Peyton. “Of course, I shouldn’t be presumptuous about your tastes, Ms. Charles. Some of the most upstanding people harbor the most…unexpected appetites. Isn’t that so, Blaine?”

“Go to hell,” Blaine spit venomously. 

She hadn’t thought she could hate Boss more than she already did, but it was a day of revelations, apparently. Blaine’s face was white, and from the set of his jaw, she was surprised she hadn’t heard any of his teeth crack.

But for Boss, she only raised an eyebrow. “This is the conversation you want to use this time for?” she asked, lacing it with just a dash of contempt. “I’ve gotta say, Stacey, I’m a little disappointed.”

Outside, through the white sheers, a shadow flitted by the window. Peyton forced herself not to glance after it.

The amusement faded slowly from Boss’s face. “You know, as a matter of fact, it’s not. Before you arrived, I was just asking Blaine how he happened to have survived having his throat slit and being buried in the woods.”

_Jesus Christ._ She remembered Ravi saying Blaine had shown up covered in dirt and blood the day he turned back into a zombie, but knowing what had happened…

Boss nodded at her shock. “I know, it’s astonishing, right? Shouldn’t be possible. And I would be tempted to say my guy just assed up the knife job – good help, you know? – except that Blaine here,” and he pointed with his gun, “doesn’t have a scar. Not a mark on him.”

_That’s why you’re twitchy_. “Pretty weird,” she conceded. “Even for the Pacific Northwest. You realize you just confessed to conspiracy to murder, right?”

Boss stared at her for a minute, then laughed again. “I sure wish you could have been persuaded to take that deal, Ms. Charles. I really would like to keep you around.”

Fear constricted her throat, but she made herself raise her chin. “Coming back to Seattle was stupid enough on its own. You think you’re gonna fare any better if you start leaving a fresh trail of bodies behind you? You’re already on the radar. Do yourself a favor and get out of here quick and quiet.”

Like a switch had been thrown, Boss’s eyes went dull and dead. Peyton eyed him warily, feeling a trickle of sweat between her shoulder blades. Every cell in her body was calling for flight.

“You really think I was gonna let this go? You ruined me, you bitch,” Boss said, and the furious quiver of his voice was as far as it could be from the mild, menacing one that had found her in her office one late evening. “And that treacherous, whoring little _snake_ over there helped you do it.”

“One of the treacherous, whoring little snake’s better moves, if I do say so myself,” Blaine spoke up.

Boss fired into the wall behind Blaine, right past his head. Peyton choked back a shout of fright, and Blaine flinched away with a yelp.

“You’re gonna have less to say when I make you eat this gun while she watches,” Boss snarled at him.

Something pinged off the outside of the bay window. Once, then again. Someone was throwing pebbles against the glass.

Boss whirled around towards the noise, taking his gun off Blaine. And then the world uncoiled, and everything struck at once.

*

Blaine rushed Boss as the bay window exploded inward, and Liv hurtled through, rolling and coming up in a crouch, crimson-and-mercury eyes fixed on Boss as her lips pulled back from her teeth. Boss’s cry of terror had barely left his mouth when Blaine hit him in the ribs with his full weight, driving him to the floor. Boss lost his hold on the gun and it slid away, into a corner.

The still-healing wound in his side protested the impact, fiercely, and Blaine gave a shout of pain, his grip faltering. Boss’s elbow took him in the side of the head and he saw stars, rolling aside, pushing himself up at fast as he could. Then Boss was being dragged away from him, screaming as he went, Liv’s hands on his ankles, then the bottom of his jacket, then his arms. She dragged him up to his feet and hurled him into the wall, where he hit like a flung toy and slid down, dazed.

Liv glared down at him, fingers still hooked into claws, before drawing a breath and turning towards Peyton. “Are you okay?”

She had to be forgiven for missing the quick movement that was Boss reaching into his coat; he’d hit hard enough that Blaine had relaxed, too. Stupid.

In the split second between when he yelled Liv’s name and launched himself at her and when Boss’s second gun popped, it occurred to Blaine that Boss might have been too stunned to pull off a head shot. But “might” was a hell of a heavy word.

Then something exploded in his chest and his name in Peyton’s mouth was a scream of fury and horror.

*

Rage swallowed her back up again, hot and red and consuming, and she crossed the room without feeling it. She grabbed an arm, twisted, snapped bone. The weapon fell. He tried to crawl away from her, making high-pitched noises the whole time.

Liv reached down over Boss’s face to grab his chin, her fingers tearing through skin into the soft meat of his throat just behind the jawbone, and his scream was a liquid, gurgling thing that couldn’t get the air it needed for any kind of volume. Then she wrenched, pulled, arm moving in a brief and brutal gesture, and Stacey Boss’s head ripped away from his body with a wet crunch and an arcing spray of blood that painted the wall and ceiling.

His body fell sideways, legs twitching.

Liv gulped in a few shuddering breaths as she came back to herself, fingers uncurling, feeling a thud on the floor beside her that she didn’t bother to look at, and, as the white static of rage faded, she heard Peyton’s voice.

“Liv, help me!”

*

Peyton’s left hand pressed her folded jacket against the hole in Blaine’s chest. Her right was beneath his head, cushioning it. Like that made a difference. Blaine was shivering violently, tremors of cold and pain wracking his body, and she couldn’t do anything but try to hold his blood in and put her hand between his head and the floor.

“Look at me. Look at me, Blaine. Look at my eyes. Breathe. Breathe in. Breathe for me.”

He did as she said, kept his eyes on hers, and dragged in a shallow breath.

“That’s it. Again, Blaine. Breathe in.”

He tried to inhale, and choked, a stronger spasm rattling him, and then his lips and chin were bloody. His eyes threatened to roll back white.

“No!” Peyton said sharply. “Blaine! Look at me!”

His lashes fluttered, and his eyes found hers again, though they were less focused.

“You stay awake and look at me. You don’t get to do this to me again, got it? You owe me, Blaine. You owe me. Liv, help me!”

“Here. I’m here.” Liv knelt opposite her, pressing fingers to Blaine’s wrist to find a pulse as she groped in her jacket pocket for her phone. Whatever she felt made her pause, a stricken look passing over her face, and she moved her seeking touch to his throat, instead. “Come on, come on,” she whispered to herself.

Blaine coughed again, weakly, wetly, and Peyton grit her teeth on a moan.

“Peyton…” he rasped.

“No. Shut up. Breathe.”

“Sorry… ‘m sorry…” The words left him breathless, gasping fast and shallow. Beneath the blood, his lips were blue-grey, as was the skin around his eyes.

“Peyton…” Liv said, quietly.

“Liv, call 911 already,” Peyton growled without looking up. Her jacket and her hand were soaked.

Blaine fumbled clumsily for that hand on his chest, catching Peyton’s wrist in a loose grasp. His lips worked mutely, words forming but not carrying, his breath fluttering like a trapped moth in his throat. Peyton leaned over him, put her ear just above his mouth.

“love…you…”

Peyton hovered there, and the room swam in front of her eyes. The smell of blood was thick, unbearable, but beneath it was still him, still the scent of his skin and whatever he used in his ridiculous hair, and she wanted that scent to mean “liar,” to mean “bastard,” but her memory was as big a fucking traitor as he was and instead it called up his arms around her while she shook and whimpered in a wrecked office, the slump of his shoulders as his father, his fucking father, told him he was worthless, the awed, adoring, joyful expression on his face that she would look up or turn around to see at least once a day. That was his tell, she could see now. That was what should have tipped her off all along. That baffled happiness that she’d been on his side, that she’d thought he was worth having.

“You son of a bitch,” she whispered. “You don’t get to do this to me again.”

“Peyton,” Liv said again, more forcefully.

“Why haven’t you called the _fucking_ ambulance?” Peyton almost screamed at her as her head whipped up, eyes spilling.

“There isn’t time,” Liv said softly, reaching out to cup her friend’s cheek and wiping away a tear with her thumb. Her tone was gentle but her words quick and urgent as she explained. “He’s cyanotic, Peyton; there isn’t enough blood left in his body. His pulse is almost gone. His heart is giving out. Even if he lasted until an ambulance got here it would be too late for them to do anything.”

Peyton stared at her, shaking her head. _This is not fair. We were ten minutes away._

“They can’t do anything for him,” Liv went on. “But I can.”

Peyton rocked back like she’d been slapped, or roused from sleepwalking. She looked down at Blaine, whose weak grip on her wrist was weakening further, his whole body going slack, his eyes on hers struggling to stay open.

_You owe me._

_You don’t get to do this to me again._

_This is not fair._

_I’m so sorry I didn’t get here sooner._

She shifted her hold, until Blaine’s neck and head were cradled in the crook of her arm, until she could lift him, just a little.

“Blaine, do you trust me?”

His head lolled on her arm, eyes drifting shut, but before his hand slid off her wrist she felt him squeeze, once.

“Do it, Liv.”

As Liv scratched her nails down Blaine’s forearm, Peyton made herself watch, made herself own the choice and see the act, even as she pressed her lips to his forehead. The marks were ugly against his skin. The blood rushing in her ears was the loudest sound in the room.

He’d sang that first morning, afterwards, when they lay in a warm tangle under the covers of her bed. She’d combed her fingers through his hair and listened to his sleepy, blissful voice, and had forgotten to ask him what the song was. She’d always meant to ask.

Blaine’s deep, gasping breath was so violent and so sudden she gasped in turn, bracing him as his spine bowed, as he pulled air into starved, healing lungs. He coughed again, hard, but with strength behind it, and Peyton and Liv turned him onto his side as he retched up the blood that had been drowning him. He went limp, panting, when it was done, and Peyton pulled him up until he was sitting, slumped sideways against her with his head on her shoulder. “It’s okay,” she soothed, rocking him. “It’s okay, it’s over. It’s all over. I’ve got you.”

He clung to her arm where it circled his stomach, held on like he was going to fall from some awful height if he let go. “Peyton?” he asked, voice weak and rough.

“I’m here.”

“Boss…”

“He’s dead, Blaine. He’s gone. We’re okay.” She didn’t realize she’d started to shake until Liv draped her denim jacket around Peyton’s shoulders. “He’s gone.”

*

He was cold, so exhausted the room was spinning around him, and his chest felt like he’d been hit by a truck. Consequently, the words being murmured to him from just above his head took longer than they should have to mean anything.

Boss was dead.

Peyton was alive.

Peyton’s arms were around him.

All good.

The cold and exhaustion and pain were less good. And the other part…the other part he couldn’t think about right now. The one bit of his awareness that wasn’t urging him to just curl up and whimper with hurt and fatigue circled that piece of reality and turned deliberately away from it. It was too much to let in, especially when the world beyond Peyton’s arms and her shoulder beneath his head was getting blurrier by the moment. Her gentle rocking was stealing what was left of his strength – and she was so warm.

“Don’t disappear,” he mumbled, fleetingly aware it might have been an absurd thing to say. But if Peyton thought so, she didn’t let on.

“I won’t. Close your eyes and rest, Blaine. I’ll be right here.”

He closed his eyes, and rested.


End file.
